The present invention relates in general to the field of liquid separators, and in particular to a new and useful method and construction of a separator housing including a stack of spaced plates, which contribute to the separation function.
It is known to use a stack of corrugated and spaced plates in the environment of liquid, in particular oil separators. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,813 dated Nov. 12, 1974 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,957,656 dated May 18, 1976, both to Castelli.
It is also known to construct separators without such plates as exemplified in the James patent identified above.
A problem arises however in retrofitting or assembling a stack of corrugated plates with an existing separator. The housing walls in which the separator is to be positioned must be of a dimension sufficiently small to permit insertion of the separator plates, plus any supporting framework, within the space. With such reduced dimension of the plates however a possibility arises that liquid, rather than the channel through the tortuous path defined between adjacent plates, will follow a path of least resistance around the stack.
The problem is particularly acute in separators which have walls defined therein which cannot be removed for inserting a suitably sized stack. Examples of this are cases wherein separator housings are formed by poured concrete.